A Look Back

Hardin County is one of the oldest counties in the Commonwealth of Kentucky, dating from the establishment of Kentucky as a state in 1792. In the Mill Creek area at the south end of post, Abraham Lincoln's father, Thomas Lincoln, once owned a small farm, and the 16th President was born in Hodgenville, south of Fort Knox. The Louisville and Nashville Turnpike, one of the early major roads through Kentucky, followed the trace of what is the post's Wilson Road today.

American Soldiers occupied the Fort Knox area as early as the Civil War. In 1862 the 6th Michigan Infantry constructed fortifications and bridges north of the present reservation boundaries. Fort Duffield, overlooking the town of West Point, was the site of one of these positions. Both the Union and Confederate armies operated in this area during the war. Union troops from the commands of Gen. Don Carlos Buell and Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman occupied Louisville and the hills overlooking the Ohio River. The brilliant Confederate cavalry leader from Lexington, John Hunt Morgan, raided the area with the 2nd Kentucky Cavalry in 1862, capturing several hundred federal troops. At present day Brandenburg in Meade County, west of Fort Knox, Morgan and his troops crossed the river for his famous raid into Indiana and Ohio.

and his troops crossed the river for his famous raid into Indiana and Ohio. The government first considered this area as a site for a military post as early as 1903. That same year the Army held large-scale maneuvers in the area, particularly in and around the small agricultural village of Stithton. What was once the center of Stithton is today the area around the traffic circle on Chaffee Avenue. The Main Post Chapel, the oldest building on post, was built as the village's St. Patrick's Catholic Church.

Despite this early interest in the area, it was not until the United States entered World War I that the government acted. Congress initially leased 10,000 acres in the vicinity of Stithton, and in January 1918, established a field artillery training center. The camp was named for Maj. Gen. Henry Knox, chief of Artillery for the Continental Army during the American Revolution, and later the nation's first Secretary of War. On June 25, 1918, Congress allocated $1.6 million to purchase 40,000 acres. Construction of the camp facilities began in July 1918, but was subsequently curtailed first by the Armistice in November 1918, then by Army strength reductions in 1921-1922. The post was closed as a permanent installation in 1922, but continued to serve until 1932 as a training center for the V Corps area, for reserve officer training, Citizens Military Training Camps, and for the National Guard. In 1925 the post received the designation "Camp Henry Knox National Forest," which it kept until 1928, when two infantry companies were assigned to the post. As Camp Knox opened its gates in 1918, the American Expeditionary Force, in the midst of its vast buildup in France, established a Tank Corps to support it in battle against the German trench lines. In the beginning, the American tankers used British and French armored vehicles and took their tactics from the British, the pioneers of tank warfare. One of the first American Soldiers to distinguish himself in this revolutionary form of warfare was a 33-year-old cavalry captain named George S. Patton.
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